A Night to Remember

A Night to Remember

         A loud bang startles me, causing my house to shake, but thinking nothing of it I continue to engage in my instant message conversation with a friend. It is a dark Friday night in fall with the leaves beginning to collect in ditches, and the weather changing as winter rapidly approaches. My dad looks at me puzzled and says, “Did you hear that?” Before I can answer, he scampers outside and we would soon find that the loud bang would be something very different from what we had expected. Investigating strange or unusual noises rather than ignoring them can make all the difference in the end, as we would soon discover.
         My heart began to race while I watched my dad run out the door as though he was convinced something bad had happened. I followed closely behind him, grasping the metal door handle that was slippery due to the sweat collecting on the palms of my hands. Not sure what I was in for, I continued running down our long driveway with determination to figure out the solution. Our dog, a white Husky mix, was far ahead of us running at full speed because she knew there was something wrong. The strong odor of burning oil mixed with the smoke from some sugar maple burning in our outside wood furnace filled the air. The closer to the road I got, the quicker the oil scent began to drive up my nose.
         At this point in time, various thoughts were running through my head. From the loud bang making my house rattle, the oil scent rapidly emanating through the air, and the dark eerie night, it came to me that possibly someone had crashed. Whatever it was, I prayed and prayed that it wasn’t anything too bad. I was almost to the end of the driveway when I began to get this horrible feeling that someone was badly injured or had possibly even died. The thing that puzzled me was the fact that there were no sounds of anything or anyone making strange noises as if they were hurt. It was so dark that I could only make out the dark, husky figure of my dad as I ran behind him in dead silence due to all the tension built up inside me.
         Upon reaching the end of my driveway, I looked around to the area where I could see my white dog rambunctiously running around as if she had found the path of a raccoon she was about to indulge in. There were large black remnants scattered in the ditch and all over the road. I could then make out a figure, which appeared to be a badly smashed up car off to the side of the road. There was heavy black smoke pouring out of the engine area and broken glass scattered all around the car. Every window except the front windshield appeared to be knocked out, possibly by some trees near the ditch which had lost some branches. The oily smoke pouring out of the engine was so strong that I could almost taste it as I began to pant like an obese dog on a hot summer day.
         As I approached the car, the sound of a girl crying profusely in fear quickly caught my ear. The first thing she said as she noticed my dad was, “My parents are going to kill me!” My dad asked her what her name was and called the police, while we took her up to our house to get some warm, dry clothes. Walking up the driveway, she seemed very upset and started to cry even more, though we tried to keep her as calm as possible. She walked with a slight limp, but didn’t appear to have any significant injuries until we reached the light. A large, bloody gash covered the area above her eye with a dark, puffy bruise below it. She must have blacked out because when I asked her what happened, she couldn’t recall much of anything.
(to be continued…)